Companies Only Thinking of Short Term Business Continuity

By Greg McNevin

January 11, 2008: The analysts at Garnter have kicked off the new year with the declaration that despite great improvements being made in business continuity management and disaster recovery, most companies are still not prepared for serious IT outages.

The claim comes in the wake of a new survey of 359 information security and risk management specialists in the US, Canada and UK, with almost 60 percent admitting that the longest outage they have planned for is seven days.

Gartner claims that not planning for longer outages leaves an organisation with huge gaps in their continuity capabilities, as disasters that last for longer than a week can have an “enormous negative impact on revenue, reputation and brand," according to Roberta Witty, research vice president at Gartner.

Witty claims that more robust plans cater for outages of 30 days.

Garnter also found that 77 percent of those surveyed said their company had planned specifically for power outages and fire, while 72 percent have planned for floods or earthquakes. Furthermore, the plans of half of those surveyed encompassed IT outages, virus and malware attacks and the failure of key service providers.

“With the growing use of third-party service providers to conduct mission critical business functions, organisations that don’t plan for this type of business outage can find themselves in a tough position in the event that this scenario becomes a reality,” said Ms. Witty.

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